African artists at the Giardini's central pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale

Algeria

Mohammed Issiakhem (1928-1985)

Mohammed Issiakhem, Woman and Wall, Venice Art Biennale

Mohammed Issiakhem, Woman and Wall Mohammed Issiakhem and one of the leaders of the Algerian modernist movement.

His work reflects the country's anti-colonial movement and shows Algerian traditions.

He also produced many portraits of the common people.

His painting “Woman and Wall” presented in the central pavilion of the Giardini at the Venice Art Biennale shows an Algerian woman with her hairstyle, jewellery and traditional Amazigh dress.

Her eyes are highlighted in black while her hands are clasped together.

She stares silently into the distance.

We see in her a spirit of resistance and at the same time her silhouette is almost ghostly.

The allusion to the clashes between France and Algeria is clear from the graffiti on the wall behind the woman: FLN (National Liberation Front) and OAS (secret armed organisation).

South Africa

Maggie Laubser (1886-1973)

Maggie Laubser was born in South Africa and is considered one of the pioneers of South African modernist art.

Maggie Laubser, Meidjie

Irma Stern (1894-1966)

Irma Stern painted this picture while in Rwanda for the royal coronation ceremony.

The portrait "Watussi Princess" is of Emma Bakayishonga, the sister of King Mutara III Rudahigwa.

Irma Stern, Watussi Princess, Venice Art Biennale

Irma Stern, Watussi Princess
Egypt

Mahmoud Saïd, Haguer, Venice Art Biennale

Mahmoud Saïd (1897-1964)

Mahmoud Said resigned his position as judge in Alexandria to devote himself entirely to his artistic career.

In this portrait “Haguer”, the woman he is painting is seated and leaning against the wall.

Unlike the portraits usually painted at the time by the westernised elite, Saïd painted this woman without any jewellery and dressed in a simple dark dress.

He thus reveals that his model comes from the working class.

This woman is also posing in a humble manner, with her hands clasped.

But despite this, the painter manages to give this ordinary woman a sacred aspect by bathing her in golden light.

Mozambique

Malangatana Valente Ngwenya (1936-2011)

Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, To the Clandestine Maternity Home, Venice Art Biennale

Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, To the Clandestine Maternity Home Malangatana Valente Ngwenya was a painter, musician and poet.

His defence of the people of Mozambique, where he was born, against Portuguese colonialism, is clearly expressed in his painting exhibited in the central pavilion of the Giardini "To the Clandestine Maternity Home".

In this painting, he highlights the oppression of women under the colonial regime of the time, which went so far as to control female reproduction.

Clandestine maternity clinics were set up, along with networks to help some women have abortions.

In this painting, the intertwined bodies show the tormented faces of the women, whose piercing gaze is directed at us.

One of the women who dominates this work in the lower left-hand corner, with her dark body, has an emaciated face, protruding ribs, and her baby visible in her womb is clearly underdeveloped, but she wraps it in her maternal love with her labour-worn hands.

Nigeria

Twins Seven Seven (1944-2011)

Twins Seven Seven's work “The Architect” represents the mother architect, the one who contains women's bodies.

She is drawn with sinuous forms in a yogi pose that combines symmetry and reflection through the double snake head that crowns her head.

Twins Seven Seven, The Architect, Venice Biennale of Art

Twins Seven Seven, The Architect
Zimbabwe

Josiah Manzi (1933-2022)

Josiah Manzi, Mfiti Woman and Snake, Venice Art Biennale

Manzi, Mfiti Woman and Snake Josiah Manzi is one of the pioneers of contemporary sculpture linked to the "Tengenenge Art Community de Guruve" movement in the 1960s.

The work presented in the central pavilion of the Biennale at the Giardini “Mfiti Woman and Snake” depicts a seated witch with a snake.

The woman and the snake are fused, connected to each other.

The body of this female witch is in fact represented as an animal totem with a conical head and elongated neck.

Josiah Manzi's work has been strongly influenced by traditional spirituality “Yao Malawian”, a secret mask-making society to which he belonged as “Chigure”.

Manzi, Mfiti Woman and Snake

Doreen Sibanda (1954)

Doreen Sibanda's work “Reclining Woman” presented at the Venice Art Biennale, shows a reclining woman with her face painted in broad strokes of bright, contrasting colours to highlight the woman's features.

Doreen Sibanda, Reclining Woman, Venice Art Biennale